alan vega

New York No Wave Queen Lydia Lunch returns to Australia and Nedw Zealand in June to perform the songs of synth–punk duo Suicide and Suicide vocalist Alan Vega.

Lunch will be joined by Andrew Coates of revered Melbourne electro trio, Black Cab to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Vega’s passing, with special guests.

The Melbourne show will feature both principals of Black Cab, Coates and James Lee.

Lunch originally met Suicide – the duo of late vocalist Alan Vega and multi-instrumentalist Martin Rev – in the 1970s, when she moved to New York City from Rochester as a teenager. They formed a lifelong bond and she often joined them on-stage to perform the song “Frankie Teardrop”,  recording a duet as part of Vega’s solo album “Sniper”, a collaboration with French experimental artist Marc Hurtado.

Since Vega’s passing in 2016, Lunch has performed several Suicide tribute shows,  often with Hurtado; together the pair recently released the live album “Metempsychosis: Reincarnate the Music of Alan Vega + Suicide”.

 
_{Jasmine Hirst photo}

The Queen of No Wave, Lydia Lunch, returns to Australia in June with two unique shows.

Lydia will perform her no holds barred, spoken word, with support from Tex Perkins in solo mode playing guitar and laptop. Lydia will also team with Andrew Coates of Melbourne band Black Cab to perform the songs of Suicide and Alan Vega. The latter has been a passion project for Lunch, having done the songs of Vega and Suicide for years in the USA and Europe with French experimental musician Marc Hurtado.

Lydia spoke to me via Zoom from her New York pad.

Mutator - Alan Vega (Sacred Bones Records)

"Mutator" is Alan Vega's 12th solo album and also his first posthumous record of (apparently) several more to come on Sacred Bones Records.  Vega also released nine collaborative LPs in his lifetime, Suicide a total of five studio and five stand-alone live albums (not including a rather incredible box set). Not a bad innings at all. 

The I-94 Bar’s Bob Short once observed that most people don't get into much music past their 20s, and I agree; and Suicide are a classic example. Of the people who fell head over heels for this outfit when they first heard their first LP (I still remember where and when I heard it, and also when and where I heard a UK bootleg of the Clash support gigs) most seem to rave only about that first LP, but seem unaware of the second, or even the ROIR tape, or any of the band's later LPs.

Of Vega himself, only a handful seem aware of the extraordinary impact his first two (now unavailable) LPs had on the underground, and the overground impact his third, "Saturn Strip" had, particularly in Europe.

_{Painting the town red: Lydia Lunch and Andrew Coates Photo: The Barman.}

Lydia Lunch
+ Rebel Yell
The Factory Floor, Marrickville, NSW
Sunday 21 June 2026

Lydia Lunch and Andrew Coates are not a Suicide tribute band. Not in the popular form of the term. Let’s call them “Suicide adjacent” by virtue of Coates’ Melbourne band, Black Cab, playing lots of their music in the past, and Lydia being the titular Queen of New York City’s No Wave scene, who saw and knew the seminal duo.

A gig billed as Lydia Lunch playing the songs of Suicide and its late frontman, Alan Vega, might not sound like typical I-94 Barfly fare but man (or woman) does not live on Detroit rock alone. Much to the disdain of some around me, I have a deep and abiding love of the New York Lower East Side Sound in all its diverse forms. A sloppy Johnny Thunders lead break or a Johnny Ramone downstroke lands as well as a Tom Verlaine vibrato-fueled filigree or Marty Rev’s monloithic Motorik beats.